1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to a fingerprint recognition method and an electronic device thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic devices such as portable phones, portable multimedia players (PMP), and personal digital assistants (PDA) are widely used necessities of modern society. More and more electronic devices incorporate fingerprint recognition functionality. Fingerprint recognition operates by obtaining a fingerprint image and comparing the obtained fingerprint image to a stored fingerprint image, thereby authenticating a particular user by leveraging the fact that fingerprints are unique to each individual. Fingerprint recognition function is used widely in security system and other authentication fields, and can be implemented in a variety of ways, such as by optical, capacitive, thermal sensing, and radio frequency (“RF”) methodologies.
The standard fingerprint recognition process is implemented by obtaining a gray-scale image of a fingerprint pattern (as illustrated in FIG. 1A). However, when a finger or a touch display surface is contaminated with foreign substances (such as water or some other conductive material), the resulting image may be overly white (as illustrated in FIG. 1B). Therefore, although the user has properly conducted the fingerprint touch operation, a fingerprint recognition error may nonetheless occur.
This may be an issue where users have a limited number of attempts to authenticate. Because of the fingerprint recognition error, the number of remaining allowable attempts will be decreased by 1. If the fingerprint recognition is configured such that some number of failures imposes a temporary system lock, this, may cause serious inconvenience to a user.
Accordingly, there is a need for a fingerprint recognition method and apparatus that enhances user convenience by reducing fingerprint recognition errors without compromising the security of electronic device fingerprint-based authentication.